Everglades pythons hide in plain sight, but hunt may resume

The hunters tramped through the Everglades, scouring the ground for Burmese pythons, ready to do battle with the giant snakes that have invaded South Florida's wilderness.

Meanwhile, up in a tree, a python watched, completely unnoticed, as the hunters came within a few yards, their eyes glued to the ground.

"We had a bunch of people walking right by where the pythons were," said Frank Mazzotti, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida, who had fitted three snakes with tracking devices so he knew their locations. "They're just damn hard to find."

More than 1,500 amateur snake hunters slogged through the Everglades in January and February during the 2013 Python Challenge, which offered prizes (longest snake caught, most caught) and enough media appeal to attract news crews from around the world. The net yield: 68 snakes.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is now discussing whether to repeat the Challenge next year. If so, it would not happen until the beginning of 2014 at the earliest, said Kristen Sommers, head of the wildlife commission's exotic species section.

No one knows how many Burmese pythons slither around in the Everglades, but they are considered a serious threat to native wildlife, consuming them and competing with alligators, hawks, panthers and other predators. They are thought to have arrived via the exotic pet industry, either as released pets that got too big for their owners or through the destruction of breeding facilities in Hurricane Andrew.

The captured snakes' remains are now being analyzed at the University of Florida's research center in Davie.

Scientists are examining stomach contents to figure out what they've been eating.

No large and obvious sorts of remains, such as deer hooves, were found in their stomachs, Mazzotti said. They are analyzing mammal remains to establish the species, and they're sending bird remains for identification to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

They are also assessing the mercury content of the snakes' flesh. Although python meat is considered edible, the Everglades has long had a serious mercury pollution problem. The higher you go up the food chain, the higher the concentration of mercury you're likely to find. And large pythons sit securely at the top of the Everglades food chain.

Three of the captured male snakes were left alive, fitted with tracking devices and returned to the Everglades in the hopes that they could lead to more snakes. That tactic worked, with the snakes finding a 13-foot breeding female.

The decision to release and track snakes also allowed scientists to see how difficult it is to find them in the wild, as they watched hunters looking for snakes completely miss them.

"They went right by," said Mazzotti.

Meanwhile, licensed hunters retain permission to kill any pythons they see in the course of going after deer, hogs or other animals during hunting season.

Sommers said the Challenge was largely successful, generating a huge amount of publicity and yielding the largest number of snakes captured in such a short term.

Although the hunters didn't clear the Everglades of pythons, no one expected them to in a single hunt.

Bruce Moore, an avid Everglades fisherman from Pembroke Pines, estimates he spent a total of 14 days during the Python Challenge, driving along levies, walking around the swamps and peering into the brush in hopes of catching a python. He never saw one.

"I'm not complaining, I enjoyed it," he said. "I went in knowing it would be hard. I spent time with some friends. I got to see some great sunsets. I saw some deer. I ran into six or seven deer together. I probably would do it again."